The “Anchorless World” Panic

Roger Cohen’s latest column is one long exercise in hyperbole. This passage is especially misleading:

Britain abandons its closest ally at crunch time. The European Union is divided, Germany silent, France left dangling, and NATO an absentee. If there are other pillars of the trans-Atlantic alliance, do let me know.

That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Then you realize that Cohen is judging the state of the “trans-Atlantic alliance” solely on whether or not it can be used to wage war on a country that poses no real threat to Europe nor America. Britain didn’t “abandon” the U.S. at “crunch time.” It’s not as if the U.S. came under attack and then Britain ignored its treaty obligations. Britain opted out of a punitive American war of choice. One might as well pretend that Eisenhower “abandoned” Britain and France when he opposed their attack on Egypt. This sort of thing makes sense only to someone who thinks that alliances require a government to endorse the least defensible mistakes of their allies. Most Americans are grateful that the vote in Britain helped to halt the push for an attack. Of course, the European Union is always divided on foreign policy, which is a function of the EU’s own internal problems and tensions, and NATO is not involved because it has absolutely no cause to be. If most of the world is against military intervention in Syria, Cohen doesn’t take that as evidence that there may be something wrong with intervening, but instead concludes that there is something very wrong with the current world order.

If the most visible issue dividing Western governments at present is whether or not to bomb Syria, that suggests that Cohen’s talk of an “anchorless world” is wrong. Cohen already panicked about the demise of the so-called “special” relationship for the same reason, but now he thinks that the entire postwar order is supposedly coming unglued because the U.S. didn’t attack another country. In other words, he thinks that the postwar order designed to prevent states from attacking other states is in jeopardy because the U.S. has been temporarily stymied in its effort to attack Syria.

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19 Responses to The “Anchorless World” Panic

Panic! Run for the hills..Obama has given the world a case of the blue bombs! Considering the evidence has not supported Assad ordered the chemical weapons and is willing give them up…well isn’t the basic goal here? Anyway, I am hoping Obama (and Kerry) does not get too wrapped by the details of the negotiations as Obama would lucky all the weapons are removed by the end of his term. He can wrapped around the budget negotiations.

Many of these pundits seem increasingly disconnected from reality. At this point what they appear to think is so far-fetched I wonder that anyone takes them seriously. However if some fella accosted any of us on the street, saying the same things, we would probably assume that he should be under some kind of supervision. At least, any of us not breathing the air of Planet DC.

I wish that the interventionists would just be more frank about what they’re asking for.

Assad can’t be trusted to hand over chemical weapons even if he says he will, so he needs to go. How is that accomplished, except by invasion and occupation? If the rebels were up to it, they would have done it by now. So we invade.

It’s not like our military’s strengths and weaknesses aren’t well-known by now, so the Syrians will not offer the sort of resistance we like – large troop formations in open country away from cities and civilian populations. Assad and his group will go underground, probably resurfacing in Iran. Those who remain will not help us to establish and maintain a more fair and peaceful Syrian state. So, we try to build one on our own, with allies among the civilian population who will want to kill each other.

To state this proposal is to convince yourself of its stupidity, but it’s a very expensive kind of stupidity. Our numbers for Iraq give us some idea of what it’s like to try uploading American Democracy 1.0 in a polarized multi-ethnic state which will quickly lose faith in it once we show that we can’t really keep order out there. What these people are asking for is another Iraq, on the basis that we just executed a brilliant idea poorly.

Trillions of dollars we don’t have, thousands of Americans killed or wounded for a Syria that will ultimately come to despise our arrogance and incompetence in managing their affairs. If that’s leadership to Cohen and those like him, then thank God we are not now what in times of old moved heaven and earth.

The problem for the interventionists with the Afghan example is that the real lesson one should draw is that the way in which we supported the anti-Soviet insurgency, by encouraging a global jihad against the Soviet occupation, very much came back to bite us in the ass. Since we can’t have that lesson drawn, than obviously (to them, but not to you and me) is that we “abandoned” Afghanistan and was why we had 9-11.

What people like Mr. Cohen want is a world in which a small group of connected people in New York, Washington and a few other capitals get to compel global consent as to the use of the US military. They have a child’s (or an addict’s, or a Boomer’s) impatience with deliberation, law, indeed, with restraint of any kind. Cohen’s is the generation – now come into its own as a global elite – that sneered at Bush Sr.’s repeated use of the word “prudence”. And so they embark on ill-planned, impulsive adventures that are forgotten almost as soon as they fail.

How galling it must be that mere US citizens still have the power to thwart them. It must seem like civilization itself is falling apart.

Maybe a minor point, but I always hate it when American pundits eager for some kind of foreign intervention end up denigrating our allies. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of American or British foreign policy, the British were with us in Afghanistan, were with us in Iraq, and took the lead in Libya. Personally I think both we and the British would be better off if they’d counseled against at least two of those wars, but the idea that anyone would cavalierly accuse the UK of “abandoning” the United States is just bizarre. The British are under no obligation to back up every damn fool idea that gets into the heads of the monster-destroying wing of the American foreign policy establishment.

Cohen’s opening paragraph is revealing – ‘the steady break-up of the postwar system’ means ‘chaos’. He makes this equivalence without appearing to believe it requires any supporting argument.

I thought the end of the Cold War pretty much signaled the break-up of the postwar (= post World War II) system.

How much longer is the “postwar system” supposed to go on, anyway? I suppose World War technically indicated the break-up of the Congress of Vienna system, which in that estimation had technically lasted about a century. But the rise of Germany had pretty much scotched that forty years earlier.

I suspect that in 50 years’ time our current situation will be regarded as “pre-” whatever is coming down the pike in 10-20 years that we can’t quite see.

“Many of these pundits seem increasingly disconnected from reality. At this point what they appear to think is so far-fetched I wonder that anyone takes them seriously. However if some fella accosted any of us on the street, saying the same things, we would probably assume that he should be under some kind of supervision. At least, any of us not breathing the air of Planet DC.”

And this is what passes for ‘liberal’ punditry in a ‘liberal’ newspaper – the idea that whenever the president wants to kill him some furrinerz, it’s the duty of all Good Bros to join in the lynch mob.

I think G. W. Bush Jr. was ‘duped’ by Cheney et al to the extent to which the invasion & the destruction of the Iraqi nation-state would not only initially succeed but work out wonderfully & problem-free and would resound eternally to his glory (as well as having helped him mop up his obvious sense of fear & failure at having had 9/11/2001 take place under his dismissive watch).

His split with Cheney in his 2nd term, in my view, came when Bush Jr. realized that he had done what Cheney et al wanted and yet it didn’t work out as they had all promised him.

Bush Jr. was an actor, and not at all passive, and was certainly in it for some really nasty personal motives, but he really, really hated it when he realized he was the mark, and Cheney et al were the carnies.

He thought he was one of them. Which is, of course, the best con of all.